Botanical Ice Tiles

Cherry Archer’s art is informed by ecopsychology, a field which fosters ecological thinking and documents how exposure to nature benefits mental, physical, and emotional well being. With each image, she examines her relationship to the natural world and seeks to create a visual interpretation of emotions and sensations experienced during her outdoor interaction. Cherry’s process begins with plants grown in her garden, gifted, or foraged during meditative forest rambles. She composes, then incrementally freezes the vegetation in water to form what she calls Botanical Ice Tiles. The tiles are illuminated with coloured light, then photographed over several sessions. On a macro scale, shooting the Botanical Ice Tile series is an analogy for global warming. On a micro scale, the series explores tensions between randomness and control, transience and preservation, and reality versus abstraction.